This application particularly relates to characterizing a target system without revealing metadata and content selections stored on the target system, thus helping ensure the privacy of the target system.
Website operators personalize online experiences. There is so much digital information that websites need to ensure their content is relevant to a user. If content is not relevant to a user, then that content gets lost and unnoticed. Website operators, then, strive to personalize the user's online experience to ensure the content is meaningful.
Personalization, however, is mostly user defined. That is, websites permit the user to establish a profile, and the website is configured according to the user's profile. Website “cookies” are one example of profile information that is exchanged between a server and a browser. The user's profile, however, is usually defined by explicit controls, such as website options that permit the user to personalize a website with news, weather, sports, and other desired information. Some websites may even utilize passive systems that slowly establish, or learn, a user's profile. These passive systems may monitor web requests and learn, over time, what interests the user.
Personalization, however, can be improved. Computer users already have favored content on their communications devices. Users already store websites and content that interests them, so users have little incentive to personalize yet another website. Users also have great concerns about privacy, so users understandably want to limit access to their personal information. What is needed, then, are methods, systems, and products that improve personalization of online experiences, that personalize based on content and information already available on a user's computer or other communications device, and that maintain privacy of personal information,